Finding and hiring the right tech talent is not the easiest task. In fact, many employers, including HR professionals, struggle with this.
But when you finally get to have the right talents on board, how do you retain those techies and convince them to stay longer at your organization?
To answer this question, we’ll first look at why talents leave companies. Then, we’ll introduce you to 5 golden tips to retain your tech talents, especially in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) market.
Why do tech talents leave organizations?
There are many reasons why talents, and especially tech talents, leave their organization. Salaries are a factor, but they’re not the only factor, as you’ll see below.
In its 2023 Survey on the State of Developer Employment, Stack Overflow found developers being open to new jobs compared to the past 2 years. The survey, which included over 1,000 developers, found “at least” 79% were “considering new opportunities if not actively looking.”
This trend isn’t limited to senior developers. These stats included both “new tech talent” and “late-career developers.”
Here are several reasons why talents, including tech talents, may be searching for new opportunities outside your organization.
Limited skill development opportunities
Many tech talents find themselves in a job where the learning curve is limited. They join companies at first with big ambitions and spirit, and within a few months, they find themselves with minimum value added to their skill set.
This makes them feel like they’re missing out on opportunities and growth, so they start searching outside your organization.
Lack of growth & career advancement
Organizations with no clear career development plans for their tech talents experience a high turnover rate.
It’s essential for talents to know where they’re headed and what their prospects are if they stay with a company for several years. A lack of direction will have them jumping ship faster than you think.
Mohamed Hassan, co-founder of EgyptianGeeks Community and CTO at Frontier Car Group, commented about that saying: “Hiring tech talents is easy, retaining them is difficult. Once they join the team, it's my role to work with them on their plan of learning & development and their career growth path inside or outside the company.”
So, it’s essential to have a career advancement plan for all the tech talents at your company.
Bad work conditions & weak compensation
As a tech business owner, you need to be more engaged in the hiring process and be able to assess your tech talents’ worth accurately because it is a double-edged sword when you don’t.
If you compensate them little for their worth, they will leave. If you compensate them higher than what they deserve, you are falling into the trap of inflating the salaries in that industry, which is another problem in the MENA market.
Inflated titles and salaries
The rise of many tech startups and businesses in the MENA region has created 2 opposing outcomes.
One is the emergence of hundreds of jobs and learning opportunities for tech talents. At the same time, there are the mismatched salaries and titles offered to these same talents.
Because the market is hungry for tech talents, companies sometimes offer bigger titles or very high salaries to entice talents. Even if those titles or salaries don’t exactly match the required skills or job description.
Not just that, but many rising companies and startups don’t have the right assessment tools or systems to measure these talents’ skills. Thus, they end up inflating the salaries and titles in the market, said Islam Abdelroauf, chief business officer (CBO) at Robusta Technology Group.
Meanwhile, Sahar Salah, IT recruiter at Sure International Technology, stresses how inflated salaries have made things worse for tech talents.
It has made them indecisive about job offers. They keep changing their minds after accepting offers, and even chasing the offer with the better money regardless of other important factors, such as the culture fit, she says.
Talent migration
Some countries in the MENA region continue to struggle with economic instability. This instability has led many talents to search for overseas opportunities.
In that regard, Islam Abdelroauf tells TechieMatter that although many companies cannot control the declining economy in their countries, they can definitely offer their tech talents competitive packages, support, and career advancement opportunities to overcome talent migration.
How to retain tech talents
As mentioned earlier, tech talent retention isn’t easy, but it’s certainly doable.
Here are 5 tips our experts advise companies to follow to not only attract tech talents but also retain them.
Offer regular feedback
Regularly revisiting and reviewing your tech talents’ performance, career advancement plan, and skills is crucial to help them develop more skills and grow inside your company.
As a business or manager, your team members’ personal and professional growth reflect positively on you as a manager and on the company as a whole.
Have a learning and development plan
Helping your tech talents gain more knowledge and experience increases their satisfaction and loyalty to your organization. You can do this by creating a training and development plan, which includes offering them courses and workshops, attending conferences, among other options for development.
Remember, the more they hone their skills and add to their interpersonal competencies, the more they will appreciate your effort and engage more in the growth of your company
Provide mentoring and coaching sessions
Providing internal or external coaching sessions helps you empower your tech talents. It allows them to explore and use new technologies. It can also contribute to fruitful and innovative brainstorming sessions that ultimately help your tech team and overall business to grow.
Mentoring and coaching sessions also help build team morale and improve team members’ behavioral and communication skills.
Offer financial support
Maintaining your tech talents’ undivided attention isn’t easy. To do so, you must eliminate other distractions and pressures surrounding them.
Ensuring you’re giving them their dues, in the form of market-range salaries, timely salary disbursements, employee perks can go a long way.
Some companies even lend a hand in their employee’s personal expenses by offering compensation and benefits like contributing to children’s school fees, offering daycare, among others.
Conduct an annual review of KPIs with a bonus scheme
Allowing your tech talents to see the impact of their work in numbers reflects greatly on their career growth. It’s important to appreciate them for their performance through regular performance reviews along with a bonus scheme.
These reviews will help them identify strengths and weaknesses, areas that they should focus on, potential training and development needed.
Having a bonus scheme alongside your performance reviews should incentivize your tech talents.
Need help hiring tech talents? Submit a job request through TechieMatter.
TechieMatter is the fastest, most reliable, and hassle-free technical recruitment platform in the MENA region. We help employers and HR professionals find the tech talents that meet their needs and company culture.
Unlike other recruitment platforms, we will not bombard you with 1,000+ resumes. Our network of tech verifiers will source and filter the techies on your behalf, delivering only a handful of carefully chosen candidates.
